


April-August ’99: The Wedding that Started it off and the Reunion that Solidified it all

by Kam14



Series: Love & Loss [9]
Category: ER (TV 1994)
Genre: Casual dating, Chicago, Committed Relationship, Conference, Dating, F/M, Flying, Hotels, London, Mention of sex, Naval Base, San Diego, School Reunion, Sentimental, wedding crasher
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-15
Updated: 2020-12-15
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:28:19
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,565
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28098429
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kam14/pseuds/Kam14
Summary: Mark invites Elizabeth to San Diego to attend his high school reunion on one of the naval bases where he grew up. Elizabeth acknowledges that Mark inviting her to accompany him to this intimate event signifies the start of what can only be deemed a committed relationship; the type of bond that Elizabeth has struggled to form until now and must learn to navigate.
Relationships: Elizabeth Corday/Mark Greene, Hugh Webber, Jimmy Stone - Relationship, Peter Benton - Relationship, Philip Yates, Reece Benton
Series: Love & Loss [9]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2033827
Comments: 2
Kudos: 4





	April-August ’99: The Wedding that Started it off and the Reunion that Solidified it all

_You can't hurry love_

_No, you'll just have to wait_

_Just trust in a good time_

_No matter how long it takes_

_(Extract from Phil Collins’ song, ‘Can’t Hurry Love’, 1982)._

Elizabeth

I don’t remember the last time I had been involved in what felt like it would turn out to be a truly committed relationship. Sure, I dated Peter Benton, which had been fun but, if I—and I imagine he too—were being honest with ourselves, casual dating was not something we were ever destined to move past. Similarly, I had been involved in a previous casual dating arrangement with Philip Yates back in London. My parents seemed to think there was more to that relationship than there actually had been, and, in any case, he hadn’t ever posed any semblance of a spark enough to deter me from moving to Chicago; to choose my love life over my career. I thought it would be the same scenario when I started dating Mark. After all, it hadn’t been anything remotely resembling love at first. Things hadn’t even been overly friendly between us; we had been colleagues and nothing more. The first time we ever really flirted with one another had been that day in April of 1999 that I was supposed to speak at a conference to which, for a whole host of different reasons like a delayed el journey, getting locked in a storage cupboard in the hotel basement, I didn’t end up making. Mark had tagged along because he’d also planned on attending the event, which had ended by the time we actually arrived and, so that the day was not a total waste of time, the pair of us decided it would be a fine opportunity to crash a wedding tango. What else?

The following week, Mark and I had ended up flirting—once again, in what had been a largely unintentional and impromptu manner—whilst treating a patient who had been pushed down an escalator and had a gushing head laceration. It was the patient who had pointed out the fact that we had been…flirting…during a trauma. I don’t even think Mark and I had fully registered what we had been doing. She asked us if we’d rather she leave. I explained to her it was just ‘surgeon talk’; that Mark elevated his clamp so that I could slide my suture…and then I realised—despite the context—just how raunchy that phrase had sounded. The thing was though, I was okay with all of this. I had already broken things off with Peter and goodness knows I was no stranger to flirting. I even flirted with _Doug Ross_ in front of Carol Hathaway shortly after I started working at County. I was still in my comfort zone because we were just having fun. That evening, after the power had been on and off all day, Mark and I decided to make the most of the now-working electricity and go to an arcade. Again, it was fun; nothing more than a casual date. This casual date, over the course of a handful of months, turned into multiple casual dates. Somehow, I felt more comfortable around Mark than I had with Peter, with Philip. Sure, we slept together a few times but that still didn’t provide me with any indication that I was madly in love with him. It’s not that I had thought I wasn’t…in love with him…it’s just that I wouldn’t say I had ever experienced _real_ love for anyone that I had dated before, so I hardly had anything with which to compare this nondescript (but good) feeling. So, as you can imagine, it was rather a shock to my system when Mark invited me to his high school reunion.

Mark

Of all people, I had resorted to asking Doug’s advice on whether to invite Elizabeth to attend my high school reunion with me. After all, we’d only been dating for a handful of months, but I hadn’t felt so hopeful, so fulfilled in a personal capacity since…since Susan left for Phoenix. That was, until I started dating Elizabeth. I’m afraid I’m somewhat challenged ta being able to tell what she thinks of—and what she wants from—us. I didn’t even know she had broken things off with Benton until the day of the conference we were meant to attend back in April. According to her, that had been a month or two prior to that day and she had hardly seemed affected by their split, which gives me an inkling that she wasn’t with him because they were deeply in love. I suppose that’s why I invited her to a school reunion as opposed to a full-blown family event. I really liked her and the last thing I had wanted to do was scare her off by jumping into anything too quickly. I was scared to lose that feeling of fulfilment, of hope; I was scared to lose Elizabeth. What I hadn’t told her before inviting her to the reunion was that my high school had been on a naval base in California where my father was stationed and where, subsequently, my family had lived for a number of years. During my time at school, I had formed very close bonds with my classmates, some of whom I still visit when time permits and whom I still consider friends to this day. Inviting Elizabeth into what I had anticipated would be the next most intimate gathering after one with immediate family was significant. It was an act that—very intentionally on my part—displayed a sense of commitment to our relationship that I felt I was ready for at this point. I just had to hope that she felt the same way.

I kind of sprung it on her, actually. She had come back to my place after we’d spent a date night at Clifford’s, a high-end bar in the centre of Chicago. It had been a great night. The morning after, she was getting ready to go to work. I recall her intending to go home to change clothes first, but I’d managed to convince her to stay for a little longer to…you know, finish things off before she left, and she wouldn’t have had time for…that _and_ to stop off at her place before work—so she had said—after all. (I guess she must have opted for scrubs that day. I had been contacted by an old classmate—the organiser of the reunion—the week prior with an invitation but I hadn’t wanted to accept until I knew whether Elizabeth would accompany me. She seemed surprised when I asked her over morning coffee. I didn’t even find an appropriate way to break it to her—I just came straight out and asked whether she’d go with me as if the request had come out of thin air. I don’t know what I would have done had she refused the invitation, seeing as I had already booked two plane tickets to San Diego. Luckily for me, she accepted albeit not in a necessarily hesitant manner but just a…slightly surprised, maybe confused one. Nevertheless, I was relieved; I was glad because I would have a chance to show her that this—for me, at least—was the start of something serious.

Elizabeth

He just sprung it on me right then and there whilst I was drinking my morning coffee in his apartment after we had just had sex…again, following the previous night! I was so taken aback that I almost choked on my coffee. It wasn’t the fact that he asked me but rather _how_ he asked me. There was an extended awkward silence and then in an impromptu move he just produced the invite out of his dressing gown pocket. I hesitated not because I had any kind of objections to being his plus one but because I wanted to know what had motivated him to ask _me._ Something told me not to do that though and, in hindsight, I’m glad that it did. I learned very early on in our relationship—as in, second date early on—that Mark, I’m sorry to say, is a bit of a pushover; a people-pleaser. But not because he has some kind of underlying, self-serving motive; simply because he wants to please others. Had I asked him why _me_ , I may have just ruined any prospect of our relationship progressing any further than a few more casual dates followed by a ‘let’s just be friends’ rigmarole. The fact that this thought even crossed my mind, on reflection, told me all I needed to know about what I really wanted from our relationship. Hint: it wasn’t the former.

Instead, I decided to do what I had done best up until this point in the romantic aspect of my life; I decided just to go with the flow and agree to accompany him on this trip. I’ll never forget his smile when I agreed to go to California. He was truly beaming. The next thing I knew, the pair of us found ourselves at O’Hare boarding a flight to San Diego International Airport. Literally. He later told me that he had already bought the tickets before he even showed me the invitation. The flight took around four-and-a-quarter hours. I, of course, knew that it was necessary to fly to get from one US state to another but, this soon after coming to live here, it still surprised me that the flight should take any longer than an hour or two. When we stepped off of the plane at SAN, the August heat had hit me like the blast you get from the oven when you open it too quickly and peer too eagerly inside of it in hunger-driven anticipation. The temperature itself didn’t feel all that different to what it had been when we left Chicago during the early hours of that morning—around twenty-six degrees Celsius…I forget what that is in Fahrenheit—but it was a different _kind_ of heat. Less stuffy and humid. We collected our baggage, proceeded through customs, and were met by a taxi which took us to our hotel. Fairmont Grand Del Mar. It was tucked away in an unfrequented canyon and was utterly lavish. 1 room. He really was serious about us.

Mark

There had only been enough time to freshen up and change before we had to leave for the reunion; it was going to take around forty minutes to drive up there. I’ll admit that the hotel I had chosen was a little out of the way of the naval base. I chose it, though, because I wanted to show Elizabeth that I cared enough to check her into a nice hotel where we could make time to do things _she_ enjoyed, as opposed to making the whole trip about _my_ plans. I came to realise later on that I hadn’t _needed_ to do that; I do believe she understood my initial sentiment in inviting her to the reunion because…it wasn’t just a reunion. I was inviting her to see a part of my past, to see some of the experiences and to meet some of the people who helped shape me into the person I am today. When we arrived at the base, I was flooded with nostalgia for what looked exactly the same as it upon my departure from it twenty-four years ago. Elizabeth, on the other hand, looked on wide-eyed at—and positively fascinated with—the routine of salutation in which a number of those who had been in my graduating class and had gone on to become naval officers were engaging.

Over dinner, myself, Elizabeth, and Jimmy Stone and Hugh Webber who were also seated at our table—one a naval officer and the other a luxury realtor based in San Marino—along with both of their wives talked namely about the nature of our childhoods. All of the Clearwater High School alumna agreed that we were, from a very young age, always aware of the transience that our fathers being in the Navy brought to our family’s lives. We concluded that, more often than not, all of us felt a sense of solidarity because we understood the hardships of wishing we had been afforded the chance to form attachments to the people that we were forced to leave behind. This had been something that had seemed difficult to discuss with Elizabeth about her own childhood; it seemed she was almost receptive to the topic. Maybe, after today, this would change.

Elizabeth

It was fascinating to hear Mark and his high school friends discuss the solidarity they had shared—and still share to this day—due to the people and places they had to leave behind. It was at this point of the reunion that I realised just how significant Mark’s decision to ask me to accompany him here had been. The people he introduced me to that day, his old friends were not just people who have passed absentmindedly in and out of his life. This was what had been missing, as I realised shortly after journeying back to normality in Chicago, from my previous relationships. Take Peter Benton, for example. He had never _wanted_ to show me the background he came from, he never wanted to give me the opportunity to meet the people who raised him, who supported him, who moulded him into the person he is today. That was something I had realised on the day of his son, Reece’s Christening. Not that I expected an invite to this intimate event in Peter’s life, but that very fact in itself was a strong indication that our relationship was not built to last. But Mark _had_ wanted to, and I had allowed him to do so. Now it was my turn. My love for London, the city where I had grown up, was unmatched but I had never formed the same kind of attachment to any of the _people_ who played a part in my upbringing as Mark had; rather, when I left London to come to Chicago, I simply felt a sense of melancholy over them. For that reason, I knew it would be a challenge. However, if I wanted to take things a step further with Mark, —and if I didn’t know whether I wanted to before the day of the reunion, I sure as hell did afterwards—I needed to show _him_ who and what had shaped Elizabeth Corday up until this point.

The night ended with Mark and I sharing a kiss under the canopy of a wonderful firework display in which all of the colours of the rainbow lit up the night sky. At that moment, I couldn’t have said what _actually_ committing to loving someone through the thick and the thin, loving someone with my whole heart, would entail in the present or in the future. The one thing I could admit without a single ounce of hesitation though, was that I felt more fulfilled and more hopeful than I ever had. I felt glad that Mark and I had crashed the wedding on that not-totally-disastrous day back in April which I truly believe, as cliché as it may sound, had set our futures into motion.

**Author's Note:**

> For some reason on which I can’t quite put my finger, I found this chapter a bit of a challenge to write. So, switching between Mark’s and Elizabeth’s perspectives to try to gain an insight into their thought processes upon dating someone new—shortly after both ending relationships of a more casual nature—and watching it slowly develop into a truly meaningful bond seemed like a way to remedy this. I hope the sense of graduality in Mark’s and Elizabeth’s growing commitment to one another and, subsequently, their realisation of just how significant this is going forward comes across in the narrative.


End file.
